Put out the lights on the Age of Reason

Here's some more hummable music (and some of it not-quite-so-hummable) to brighten an already fine summer day:

And One - Speicherbar:



Front Line Assembly - Mindphaser:



Not wishing to make this an all-synth post, here's New Model Army - Here Comes the War:



Laibach - God is God (which, believe it or not, is a cover of Juno Reactor):



Seabound (yes once more) - Castaway:



Lard (side project of Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra) - War Pimp Renaissance:



And the best for last, Dust of Basement - This big hush (the album to own is Meridian):

Flere norske superhelter: Jern- og metallkvinnen

Opprinnelse: En arbeider ved jernverket i Mo i Rana faller i et hav av flytende jern. Alt svakt og dødelig brennes vekk, og når hun stiger opp igjen er hun .. Jern- og metallkvinnen, arbeidernes beskytter.

Handling: Vi er i en norsk småby på 1970-tallet. Sønnen til sjefen på den lokale hjørnestensbedriften kommer tilbake fra sine MBA-studier i Oslo, hvor han har blitt hjernevasket av en Ayn Rand-sekt som vil ødelegge den norske økonomien for å bevise et filosofisk poeng. Etter å ha drept sin far innfører han et terrorregime: Fagforeninger forbys, arbeidsdagen økes til 18 timer, og alle arbeiderne erstattes med innbussete pakistanere. Lokalsamfunnet går i oppløsning, og nå står resten av Norge for tur. Bløthjertete sosialdemokrater står rådville. Bare én kan stoppe objektivistenes terrorplan. Bare én tør heise flagget rent og rødt i en tid av gryende markedsekstremisme. Jern- og metallkvinnen. Sammen med våpenføre radikalere fra Blindern organiserer hun en geriljakrig mot kapitalmakta, en krig som snart har blårussen på tilbaketog. Men hva gjør våre helter når NATO griper inn? Og klarer de å forhindre oppstartsmøtet til Anders Langes Parti på Saga kino?

Tagline: Jern- og metallkvinnen. Jern varer evig.

Se også: Kaptein Nidaros

Flere norske superhelter: Kaptein Nidaros

I tråd med Aftenpostens forslag til norske superheltfilmer, her er: Kaptein Nidaros.

Opprinnelse: I 1000 år har St. Olav ligget begravet under Nidarosdomen, for atter å vende tilbake når det norske folk er i sin ytterste nød. Nå er dagen og timen kommet. Olavsånden stiger opp og trer inn i NTNU-studenten Gunnar, og sammen blir de .. Kaptein Nidaros!

Handling: Fra sitt gangsterrede på Grønland styrer den fanatiske innvandrertalsmannen Ali Manchu hele Oslos undergrunn med jernhånd. Politiet tør ikke stoppe ham, av frykt for rasismeanklager. Nå skal terrorveldet utvides. Et lasteskip med containere fulle av muslimske voldtektsmenn er på vei for å spre kaos i hovedstaden. Bare en mann kan redde Oslo. Bare en mann tør rive av seg den politiske korrekthetens silkehansker, og plassere en sunn, norsk knyttneve der den hører hjemme. Kaptein Nidaros. Men mektige krefter står mot ham. Før Kaptein Nidaros kan stoppe Ali Manchu må han hamle opp med en konspirasjon av kulturrelativister og sosialister i Justis- og politidepartementet. Og bak det hele skjuler det seg en fryktelig hemmelighet, som vil ryste det norske hus ved sine grunnvoller. Tidenes mest kontroversielle norske thriller! Se Bjørn Fjordquist i sin siste legendariske rolle som Ali Manchu!

Tagline: Kaptein Nidaros. Han vet hvem klokkene ringer for.

Se også: Jern- og metallkvinnen.

Marines make do

Half of my interest in Generation Kill is watching people's reactions to it: Those who support the Iraq war, those who don't, those who have been in the military, and those who haven't. To get the obvious out of the way: This is a great series by the creators of The Wire, and you should watch it for that reason alone. Yes, but how accurate is it? The series portrays Marines in a partly negative and unheroic light, so the best people to point out flaws would be ex-Marines themselves. In that respect, the discussions here and here are illuminating. Scroll past the "stupid Hollywood elitists hate the military"-comments, and you'll find comments along the line of "uh, I was actually in the Marines, and this is pretty much what we're like". The funny thing is that Generation Kill does not come off to me as an indictment of American Marines, at most it's biased against the commanders. It shows regular people making mistakes, it shows civilians getting killed, but that's what you get when you go to war, any war, even the justified ones. The crime of the Iraq war was the decision to launch it, but if you have to fight a war, the people in Generation Kill would be the right people to fight it. What the series does is present the unavoidable chaos and screwups of war, and it does it so well that I think it will set the standard for this genre for a long time.

Er det verdt det å bidra på Wikipedia?

Jeg har gående en diskusjon med Eirik Newth om det er verdt det for forskere og andre eksperter å bidra på Wikipedia. Mitt ankepunkt mot Wikipedia er at den ikke verdsetter ekspertkunnskap. De som kan noe og de som ikke kan noe må bli enige på likt grunnlag. For artikler hvor mange ønsker å bidra betyr det i verste fall at du må være en player i Wikipedia-byråkratiet for å få ting gjort. Det andre problemet med Wikipedia er at komiteer skriver dårlig. Etter å ha vært gjennom to tusen redigeringer av hundre forskjellige personer er det ikke mye liv igjen i språket i en artikkel. Struktureringen blir også dårlig, og å skrive om noe fra bunnen av slipper du neppe unna med. God presentasjon kan høres ut som luksus, men tenk på den dårligste og den beste foreleseren du har vært borti, den dårligste og beste fagboken. Formidlingsevne er viktig, og det er det bare enkeltpersoner som kan ha, ikke komiteer. Når det er sagt så er faktaene i Wikipedia som regel til å stole på, men du gjør nok ofte lurt i å bla litt lenger ned i søkeresultatene på Google når du vil lære om noe.

Before you form an opinion about global trade

An excersise for pundits: I want you to make a prioritized list of the parties that are affected by the current WTO negotiations, including (but not limited to) a) Consumers in rich countries, b) farmers in rich countries, and c) developing countries (feel free to split this group into several). You may believe that some of these groups have common interests, (free trade / trade barriers are good for everyone, yay! and there'll be free ponies too!), but assuming that they don't, who comes first, second, last? Make the list (or distribute percentages), publish, and discuss. As an advanced followup excersise, (warning: very difficult), keep your priorities in mind whenever you write about global trade. Don't be a hypocrite. And please don't take the easy way out by rationalizing a "perfect for everyone" solution that does not exist. World's usually not like that, why should this be any different?

Give me a pill to make me sleep

I am not going to recommend Doris Lessing's 1971 Briefing For a Descent Into Hell, to anyone, ever, probably, or at least not without a word of warning. I liked it, I'm impressed by it, and moved, it's one of the strangest novels I've read in a while, but it's not the sort of book you just hand to someone, "here, read this!" It was only the quality of the writing that carried me through the uneventful first third, and I was beginning to worry that it would all be nothing more than this: a mildly peculiar journey made by a madman in his own mind while undergoing psychiatric treatment. And then it transforms into a mystical experience that combines ancient mythology, science fiction and pantheistic ecology. It's kind of the written equivalent to prog, which is another reason not to recommend it: people have mixed feelings about that sort of thing. Now I like prog, in small doses, and I also like this novel. Lessing is ambitious, but her ambition is matched by her skill. And if I ever go on a cosmic journey to find my true self, I'd want Doris Lessing to document it with her beautiful, hypnotic writing. But I'll respect your decision to stay at home, (you brainwashed materialist zombie!) Now where did I put those Eloy records?

Redd for å bli Finn-Erik Vinje

Det er litt artig at jeg finner Are Kalvøs Våre venner kinesarane i humorseksjonen i bokhandelen, da den, forfatterens status som moromann til tross, har et seriøst budskap, og er på langt nær så latterlig som enkelte sinte unge menn og sinte unge kvinners bidrag i aktualitetshyllen like ved. Våre venner kinesarane er et takkeskrift til kinarestaurantene, for alt de har gjort for å bringe Norge og verden tettere sammen. I over 40 år har de gitt nordmenn sin første smak av omverdenen, ikke bare i storbyene men overalt hvor en foretaksom innvandrer kan klore seg fast. Siden har andre kommet til, vi har fått burger og pizza og kebab og pasta og sushi, men kineserene var først, og det er det Kalvø vil takke dem for. Kinarestaurantene representerer for Kalvø alle de gode sidene ved det flerkulturelle og globaliserte Norge. Mangfoldet. Valgmulighetene. Vår verden er ikke problemfri, men langt bedre enn det gamle monokulturelle Norge, med sitt NRK-monopol, Samvirkelag og hjemmelagde blodpølser. Ja, det er en gimmick å reise rundt til alle norske kommuner (158!) som har kinarestaurant, og nei, dette avslutter ingen opphetete debatter, men resultatet er en ordentlig hyggelig bok, småviktig på en stille og forsiktig måte, ja litt som de bortgjemte kinarestaurantene han rapporterer fra. La meg derfor istemme sammen med Kalvø, til alle som har bidratt til at jeg i dag spiser bedre enn i min mattradisjonelle barndom: Takk. Takk skal dere ha.

Æsj, for en terminologi!

Hodejegerne er min første Jo Nesbø-roman, og jeg er ikke sikker på om det blir noen flere, om ikke noen overbeviser meg om at dette var uvanlig svakt fra Nesbø. For denne kriminalthrilleren om hodejegeren som stjeler fra jobbkandidatene sine, og nå bare skal utføre det siste store kuppet (åjada! "men alt går ikke etter planen" osv), begynner dårlig. Fryktelig dårlig, og den karrer seg bare gradvis oppover til å bli akseptabel. Det er noe klønete over Nesbøs forsøk på å overbevise oss om at vår antihelt er en lynende intelligent drittsekk. Det blir bare på liksom, og den satiriske skildringen av elitemiljøet han tilhører treffer ikke bedre. Det er ikke ekte. Jeg tror ikke på det. Men etterhvert skjer det noe. I takt med økende puls og et eksploderende antall lik finner Nesbø stemmen sin, dialogen er ikke lenger til å le av, (joda, overskriften er et sitat), og karakterene får noe som nærmer seg dybde. Handlingen er og blir idiotisk, men det er i og for seg greit i en god, trashy spenningsroman. Noe dette totalt sett ikke er, men kanskje kunne ha blitt om forlaget hadde overtalt Nesbø til å skrive om de første 100-150 sidene. Så hva skal man lese i stedet? På sitt beste minner Hodejegerne meg om hvorfor jeg liker Øyvind Myhres politiske thrillere: En himmel av jern, og 1989. Du finner dem kun brukt, og du får liberalistisk paranoia med på kjøpet, men det er langt bedre lesning enn dette.

Why you should watch The Great Global Warming Swindle

The Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle is a fine test for whether someone is qualified to have an opinion about global warming. If that documentary impressed you, then you're not qualified. Not because you're on the "wrong side", (there are smart people and interesting ideas everywhere, they may be mistaken but there's nothing seriously wrong about that), but because it misrepresents the climate theories it criticizes in some very basic ways. If you watched it all through without noticing those mistakes, then you should temporarily stop having opinions about global warming right now, until you know more about it. Sorry. That said, I have no respect for those who disliked the documentary so much that they reported it to Ofcom, the British television regulators, in the hope, apparently, of preventing such views from being expressed at all. There's something about non-comformist views that brings out the authoritarian in people, and this is always sad to watch, especially when their actions are counterproductive to a cause I support. Ofcom naturally ruled mostly in favor of Channel 4, thus handing a victory to the bad kind of climate skeptics: The clueless ones.

Random movies, '68 edition

More random movies, all of them from 1968, (why? why not?), which means they're prefiltered by 40 years of film fans and are actually mostly interesting:

I Want Him Dead - Revenge themed spaghetti western. Crappy but fun, like most revenge flicks, (though not up to the Japanese classics).

Petulia - Some sort of sophisticated socialite sex comedy, interweaved with traumatic memories and a touch of sci-fi? Hm what? Watched: 12 minutes. IMDB reviewers say Petulia is underrated and misunderstood. Count me as a misunderstander.

Psych-Out - Haight-Ashbury exploitation, and Jack Nicholson with a ponytail. A lot of fun, but by the time it's all over you'll really, really hate hippies, (this may have been the purpose). IMDB reviewers say the hippie scene wasn't like this at all. Aww.

Spider Baby - Plan 9-style intro speech and bad acting. Watched: 5 minutes, then fast forwarded through the rest. IMDB reviewers say it's a self-parodic cult classic. Okay, but still.

The Night They Raided Minskys - Quick-witted comedy about a burlesque theatre in 1920's New York, telling the urban legend version of how strip tease was invented, (by accident, your honor, I swear!) Works when the plot steps aside.

Danger: Diabolik - Italian crime movie where the hero is some sort of Batman supervillain who dresses like a ninja. And he's a political radical too. Absolutely awesome. IMDB reviewers say it's based on a comic book, which makes sense.

I took what others would have taken

Being a fantasy author is a good background for writing historical fiction. The past is an alien world, and the temptation is to fill it with people just like you and me. Michael Moorcock avoids this in Byzantium Endures, the first of four novels about the life of Pyat, a Russian engineer, in the first half of the 20th century. Born on January 1, 1900, Pyat is headed for hard times, and Byzantium Endures takes him from his childhood in the Ukraine to the end of the Russian civil war. Pyat is a resentful man, often mean-spirited, and an anti-semite. He is in his own view a brilliant engineer of unrecognized genius, far ahead of his time, but he's not a reliable narrator, (he claims he built a flying machine at age 13, and later a ray gun that almost worked), so his actual abilities are a mystery for the reader. Pyat is sympathetic to the proto-fascist futurist movement, he believes in science, technology and reason, but also in tsarist Russia and the Orthodox Church. He hates the Jews and Bolsheviks for destroying the world he was promised, and the story is often interrupted by rants about Orthodox Russia's rightful place in history. Like George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman, the greatest scoundrel and coward in the British empire, Pyat is the ugly past in its own angry words, half revolting and half sympathetic, but unlike the Flashman novels, this isn't comedy. How could it be?

My name is .. and I'm a book addict

Nick Carr's essay on the danger web technology poses to the ability to concentrate on long texts has spawned two interesting discussions, one at Britannica's blog and another at Edge. This is an important discussion, not because Carr or anyone else has found the answer, but because it's time for us to think about what web culture is doing to us - or rather, how we would like to use these new tools. For we have a choice. If the web causes us to read fewer books like Carr warns, and even to think in twitter-sized chunks, I think that's a bad thing, but it's not inevitable. Once you become aware of where the technology is pushing you, you have a choice of going along or pushing back. For my part, I read more books than ever these days, but I haven't always. The ability to read books doesn't come for free, it's not something a lucky few are granted, it can be trained, or neglected. The world is changing, far more than most people realize, and you need to ask yourself what kind of person you want to be in this new world. Do you want to be a book-reader? There are good alternatives, all I ask is that you choose consciously, and not just float along wherever the river takes you.

Den onde hyrde

Jens Bjørneboe skriver godt. Jeg vet ikke helt hvorfor dette overrasker meg, for jeg har lest en del av essayene hans, men jeg hadde kanskje ventet meg mer polemikk og mindre romankunst. Den onde hyrde (1960) er ikke polemikk, det er satire, av den typen du ikke ler av. I våre dager er det politisk korrekt å klage på snillisme i fengselsvesenet, men alle reformer til tross kommer jeg aldri til å føle meg vel med innesperring som straffemetode. I beste fall kan jeg føle at noen fortjener det, men ikke at det gir mening på noe høyere nivå enn å holde forbryterne vekke fra ofrene sine en stund. Jeg vet ikke om noe alternativ, men liker det gjør jeg ikke. Det blir ikke bedre av at vi deler ut de strengeste straffene for handlinger som knapt burde vært forbudt. Jeg tror at den dagen ettertiden skal dømme oss - for det skal de, slik vi dømmer våre forgjengere - så er det narkokrigen de vil ta oss på. De vil kalle det en av de store statlige forbrytelsene i vår tid, og de av oss som fremdeles er i live vil ha lite å si til vårt forsvar, for ikke gjorde vi noe og ikke sa vi noe, vi bare lot det skje. Narkotika er ikke et tema i Den onde hyrde, men det er noe jeg vil du skal ha i tankene når du leser den, i tilfelle du føler deg fristet til å tenke at heldigvis er alt så mye bedre nå.

Zooty! Zoot Zoot!

My favourite libertarian skeptics, Penn & Teller, are back with a sixth season of Bullshit on Showtime. In line with my finger argument, Penn & Teller make anger and personal attacks a central part of their exposes of supernatural and puritanical beliefs. The tone is mocking, and will certainly alienate those who sympathize with the victims, but that doesn't bother me as much as it once would have. There's a time for having a calm and rational argument on whatever common ground you have with the other side, and there's a time for rudely demonstrating how little common ground you actually have, as when in the recent episode on internet pornography and those who'd ban it they don't argue that it's beneficial or harmless, but rather that there's no proof that it's dangerous, so let's just go with what's fun, (an argument they then underline with plenty of nudity). Like all libertarians Penn & Teller have their cranky ideas, (climate skepticism is a popular one), but "being right all the time" is a silly standard for pundits and documentarists - I'd rather take smart, witty and interesting. Other themes this season: new age medicine, NASA, sleep and .. uh, dolphin superpowers? What?!

The Mind of God _is_ Cosmic Music Resonating Through 11-dimensional Hyperspace

A couple of songs I'm humming on these days:

Avalost by Seabound, from No Sleep Demon v2. Sorry about the cellphone quality, this song deserves better. (Here's Transformer, another good song from the same album.)



In the same vein, but more anthemy, Ritual Noise by Covenant, from Skyshaper.



And on a lighter note, Mind of God and Tune Up by Electric Universe, from Silence In Action.

Twins, doubles, twins and doubles

Alternate history is a branch of science fiction, where the science in question is history, and for all its linchpin corniness I like it. (Btw I wonder if Robert Silverberg's 2000 short story A Hero of the Empire, where Muhammed is killed to prevent the rise of Islam, could have been published today - in fact, forget I even mentioned it: look over there instead, my hypothetical Islamist readers, please leave mr Silverberg alone!) In The Separation, Christopher Priest weaves two histories together, one where Britain and Germany signed a peace treaty in 1941, and the other, our own, where they didn't. A pair of identical twins are central to the story and to the mystery of the histories' relationship to each other. This twin-theme and much more will be familiar to people who enjoyed The Prestige, another Priest novel, which was made into a wonderful movie. There's the same sense that you're only gradually being told what kind of story it is you're reading. This trick is easier to pull off in short stories, but Priest manages it here, and he does it by changing the ground beneath you gradually, while you're reading, instead of with a burst of twists at the end. It's all very elegant and I liked it, (Philip K. Dick was good at this as well, although also extremely weird, which Priest isn't, (Dick's later plots generally revolve around drug-abusing schizophrenics, which gets tiresome after ten times or so)). I'll read more of Priest. (He's also a funny guy.)

The five-minute movie test

I like to watch the first five minutes of randomly downloaded movies. Find ten movies I haven't heard of, see the beginning of each, and usually one of them will be worth watching to the end. The discovery is more enjoyable for it being random, the movie becomes your own in a sense a "you have to see this!" movie never can. You also get to appreciate the movie on its own terms, not knowing any plot points in advance. I found Altered States this way, a real gem. Of course, most of these movies are shit, but even the bad ones are interesting as little glimpses into the backstreets of movie history. Today's movie: Lawman (1971), which I did give up on after 5 minutes, (it opens with a generic Western brawl and a stranger riding into town, so I figured I could save myself some time and just imagine the rest), but then I found some positive reviews and decided to give it a second chance. Glad I did, it's a fine western, just the way I like them. And now I have five more unknown movies to try out next. (Yes, I do buy the good ones.)

Is this rehash really necessary? Yes it is

The Sandbaggers is one of the most brilliant television series I've seen, so it was something of an experience to open up Queen & Country, a comic book bought on random, and find an exact replica of the premise for Ian Mackintosh's 1978-1980 series. The homage is deliberate, and although I am tempted to reprimand Greg Rucka for stealing The Sandbaggers, merely filling it with different characters and moving it up to our own time, I am so in love with The Sandbaggers that I am really just happy to have it all back. Mackintosh's brilliance was to create a realistic spy series with emphasis on the bureaucratic infighting back home, (which shouldn't work but it did), and Greg Rucka has updated this beautifully, replacing the Cold War-plots with similarly styled stories of his own, (interestingly, terrorism is a major factor in both versions). Rucka follows, and never surpasses the old master, (who disappeared and supposedly died in an airplane accident in 1979, but personally I believe he was taken by aliens), but he breathes enough fresh air into it to make it worthwile. And Queen & Country is far better than the third season of The Sandbaggers, which was filmed after Mackintosh's death and partly written by others, (the fact that the he managed to write four episodes after his own "death" certainly lends credibility to my alien abduction theory, now doesn't it?)

There's a feeling I get when I look to the east

The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke reads at times like the space travel scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey: calm and majestic. This is hard SF in the purer sense, science fiction with an emphasis on the wonders of almost-possible technology, and not much on anything else. Crises are resolved in a rational manner, and with correspondingly calm language. On one hand it reassures the reader to know that the author isn't just randomly pulling our hearstrings, that things happen for reasons that go beyond "ooh, time for another race against the clock, now who can I place in jeopardy next?" Doesn't make for a very interesting novel though. The Fountains of Paradise is a wonderful concept sketch of the space elevator, one of the more awe-inspiring solutions to launching people into space. And it's not a bad novel, Clarke is a great writer, and some might find this minimalism refreshing, (it did get the Hugo and Nebula awards), but to me it's all just too .. respectable. The opening, with its parallels between an ancient king of a Sri Lankaesque island who builds a mountain palace to bring Heaven to Earth, and a 22nd century engineer's dream of a space elevator in the same area, made me expect something bold along the lines of "The 9 billion names of God", but the religious themes are quickly resolved and set aside, to give way for scientific awe with some drama attached. That said, this could make an awesome movie.

This blog ain't big enough for heroes

Where have all the movie heroes gone? Drawing social lessons from pop culture is a risky game, and so is pretending to know better than Hollywood execs what people will or will not pay money to see. James Bowman fails to convince me that the clean, inspiring heroes of classic Hollywood are gone, but I wouldn't much miss them if they were. There is no such thing as a hero. There is such a thing as a heroic act, but the people who perform them are ordinary, and I would rather that everyone realize their own heroic (and villainous) potential, than believe this to be reserved a distinct kind of pious human. Nor are clean heroes particularly interesting as characters. One exception was Roj Blake in Terry Nation's Blakes' 7, because his heroism was contrasted with the more realistic world around him, and the ordinary selfishness and cowardice of his followers - his idealistic actions were often ineffectual or counterproductive. This is not to say that the solution is to be "dark and gritty", a macho style for teenage boys that despite some original freshness is now a boring cliche. Show me real, flawed people doing good and bad things. Show me that regular, selfish, cowardly people like me can choose to do the right thing. Inspire me, if you like, but there's nothing inspirational about Jesus Christ the son of God with a cowboy hat coming to town to clean out the garbage. Now Judas or Peter, there's a character.

The underappreciated finger

The finger is the world's most underappriciated political statement. Used against people it's merely an insult. Used against powerful entities such as governments, political parties, religions or corporations, it's a statement of personal freedom. This is my life, my space, leave me alone. It works on two levels, it not only rejects a set of beliefs but the language they are expressed in. Of course we do need government and even quite a bit of it, and there's nothing inherently wrong with large corporations or religions. The finger is not the whole of the message, it is the beginning of it, it puts authority on the defensive, forced to justify further invasions of our lives. "Fuck off. Now explain to me again why you need to read my e-mail." There are more elegant ways to express the same idea, but polite wording strips this beautiful idea of much of its power. The finger is also the only appropriate response to bullshit, the language of PR and spin. A statement that has been carefully manufactured to manipulate you through emotion, evasion and ignorance does not deserve a rational response, it deserves only the finger. There's no need to actually show it, (and who would you show it to?), but it is important that you think it, that the image of the finger is the first thing to pop into your mind when powerful entities want to mess with your life, and that you let that image guide and inspire your reaction.

Hvor er alle kulturrelativistene?

Dette er en melding til alle kulturrelative venstreradikalere: Jeg trenger frivillige til et forskningsprosjekt som skal finne ut av hvorfor dere hater alt som er godt. Gjennom dyptgående spørsmål som "hvorfor hater du frihet?", "hvorfor hater du demokratiet?" og "hvorfor gnir du deg i hendene som en bebartet b-filmbanditt over all lidelsen sosialistene påfører samfunnet vårt?", skal jeg avdekke motivasjonen bak deres terroristvennlige femtekolonnist-arbeid, med sikte mot behandling av rammede og til sist en allmenn vaksinasjon.

Noen frivillige? Anyone? Kom igjen, ikke vær feige. Alle andre ivrer etter å fortelle verden i kjedsom detalj hvorfor X er løsningen, Y er fienden, og Z er en farlig myte. Men dere ondsinnete selvhatende venstreradikalere hører jeg sjelden noe fra. Jeg vet at dere finnes. Jeg har hørt om dere i årevis. Jeg har lett etter dere både her og der, men neimen om jeg finner dere, annet enn langt inne i mørke kroker, men vi vet jo at det ikke er der dere er, men i sentrale maktposisjoner, i midtstrømsmedia og akademia. Av dette kan jeg bare konkludere at dere er meget sjenerte. Derfor dette forskningsprosjektet, hvor dere i full anonymitet kan forklare meg hvordan dere ble så slemme.

Ta kontakt, så avtaler vi tidspunkt. Vennligst ikke ta med urinprøve!

What is your obvious, dull or unlikely idea?

John Brockman at edge.org asked scientists what their "dangerous idea" is, meaning something they believe may be true but might create a stir of everyone accepted it. Their answers are collected in What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, a book that is far less interesting and provocative than the title implies. Cultural differences is one cause, "there is no such thing as the soul" is not my idea of a provocative proposition, (next you'll tell me we're related to chimpanzees!) Other dangerous ideas are not all that profound, many are a bit silly, (not as in "how dare they say this!" but "eh .. nah I don't think so"), or they're interesting but not the right kind of interesting for a book like this. Some are. I especially like the ones that deal with the unpredictability of technological, scientific and cultural change, meaning we have no idea and no possible way of knowing if we're headed for a world that is better or worse than the current one. (Here's my views on this, and here's Hayek's.) The book as a whole though didn't interest me much - buy it to browse through the pages, or better just read the answers online.

256 words or less (or else!)

Now that the Google has turned your brains into mush, (something Microsoft never managed), bloggers have only two (yes, only two - don't question me, just read and believe) options: We can try to retrain your brains by writing long, difficult essays, or adapt to your short attention span by writing short, superficial blog entries. (For you youngsters out there, a blog entry is sort of like a long Twitter message, a maxi-twitter if you like - we used this in the old days back when horse-carriages roamed the world.) Not being quite sure which strategy will work out in the long run, I'm going with both. Long essays go there, while anything I write here is guaranteed to be 256 words or less. I can offer this money-back-guarantee because you're too lazy to verify it, and if you do verify it you're too polite to complain. Also because it's fun. As Shakespeare once said, the old-fashioned art of selecting your words in such a manner as to have as few of them as possible without loosing any meaning, is the very central characteristic, the essence if you like, or at least the foundation, of the practice of writing in a manner that many people will find poignant, enjoyable and educational, ie. not a waste of time, (though of course this does not guarantee quality as such, and there are plenty of other important caveats, such as the author's writing ability, but you get the drift). And that clocks us in at exactly 256 words, hooray!